France steps up probe into rat-eaten corpses

PARIS: French investigating magistrates will probe claims that human corpses donated for science were left to rot and be eaten by rats at a university research facility, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Thursday. A probe into “violations of the integrity of a corpse” was handed over to the magistrates by prosecutors who handled the initial phase of the investigation after l’Express magazine reported the scandal last November. The newspaper said the remains of thousands of people who donated them for research were discovered in abhorrent conditions at the Centre for Body Donations (CDC) of the Paris-Descartes University in the French capital. Bodies were strewn around naked, dismembered, piled one on top of the other, with even a severed head lying on the floor, l’Express reported, describing the scene photographed in 2016 as resembling a mass grave. Some body parts were decomposing, others lay there chewed by rats amid overflowing garbage bags containing pieces of flesh.